Nu het analoge signaal is uitgeschakeld, houden we de all singing, all dancing, digitale tv over. Digitaal komt in verschillende gedaantes op het eiland Man, Sky (betaald abonnement), Freesat en FreeView. Als u Sky niet elke maand een belachelijk bedrag wilt betalen, dan blijven de opties Freesat en Freeview over. Freesat vereist dat u een schotel en bedrading hebt, hoewel u hiervoor uw oude Sky-schotel kunt gebruiken. Veel mensen gaan echter steeds meer over op het gebruik van alleen Freeview, omdat een deel van de deal van hoe het werd verkocht, alle extra kanalen waren. Dit zou geweldig zijn, behalve Als je op het eiland Man bent, kun je geen volledige gratis tv-dienst krijgen... of toch wel?
The problem is that the more remote parts of the UK get a cut down version of Freeview. Instead of the 40 or so channels that come with the full service we only get 15. What makes this even more annoying for Manx people is that our greatest export, the TT, is shown exclusively on ITV4 in the UK. ITV4 is one of the channels that is in the full freeview channel list but not on our cut down version.
How To Get A Full Freeview Service On The Isle of Man
There are ways and means and if you’ve got broadband then you are 99% of the way there. There is a website called TVCatchup which grants access to the full Freeview service, for free, to anybody in the UK (here is a list of all the channels you can watch for free). All channels are shown live, this isn’t some sort of iPlayer catchup service but live streaming of live TV channels. This can be viewed via various Apple devices, a PC, Android devices, Playstation 3 or just about anything else capable of showing streamed video. You can then either watch on your limited display size or even better just connect to your TV. From personal experience I’ve connected up to a 55 inch Plasma and the quality was fine.
If you want something specific then this Android tablet is cheap as chips and has a HDMI out, it works very well for watching the other Freeview channels on your TV. Basically though if you’ve already got something that you can connect to your TV then try using that, the TVCatchup website is free to use so it’s not like you’ve got anything to lose.